Main menu

Category Archives: Sketches

Post navigation

I haven’t had much time to draw lately, which is why I haven’t been updating this blog. But since it’s Sunday, and I haven’t published a “Sketchbook Sunday” post in a while, here’s an old brush pen sketch of me smoking a pipe. I don’t really smoke, but my friend occasionally does, and he also owns a pretty cool collection of pipes.

Hey, did you know that I now have three blog posts which are tagged with “pipe“? I certainly didn’t, because I just found out. The other two are of a character design (version one and two) I made around the same time I drew the sketch above. Maybe I should draw more people with pipes and make it a thing?

I’ve finished the last sketch suggestion! The series is now complete with six very different, finished illustrations. If you missed the last few updates, these are the posts and drawings I’m referring to:

This is my interpretation of the following request, submitted by Brian:

Illustrate an abstract idea, more specifically a question like the kind you would find in language learning books. Examples are “Where do you live?”, “What’s your favorite color?” and “How old are you?”.

I went with “What’s your favorite color?”. I can also imagine a fitting follow-up question will be “Can you name a flower or a fruit that has your favorite color?”. I don’t know much about pedagogy, but it feels kind of natural to make the student think of something for him/herself. In that way, it’s a good thing I went with colorful plants to illustrate the question, right?

Drawn on thick marker paper, “inked” with Sakura Micron fine liners and colored with Letraset Promarkers. I wrote the text with my Wacom tablet, picking up a dark green color from the leaves on the sunflower plant. I think the drawing style looks a little bit childish, so perhaps this illustration would work best in a textbook for kids…What do you think?

Anyway, I’m aiming to post another illustration/graphic later this week, so don’t forget to check back in a few days!

Hey, it’s Yotsuba with a balloon! I’m posting this because it’s been so long without an update. Do not worry though, I’ve got other drawings in the works, and still have one request left to do…

By the way, I scanned this drawing/painting with my new scanner! It captures all of the details like nobody’s business! I’ve left the image mostly untouched, so you can still see the texture of the watercolor paper I used.

Also, I hope this counts as fan art, even though it’s copied directly from one of the Yotsuba books (to be awfully precise, it’s from the splash page of chapter 61 in book no. 9). I sometimes copy the work of artists that I like for practice, but I’m hesitant to post it like this. Strictly speaking, It’s not something that I made myself and may therefore be frowned upon… But at least I got to mess around and play with watercolors, so I hope it’s okay. It’s all part of the learning process, and it’ll be nice to look back on this to see if my watercoloring skills have improved at all.

Phew, long time no see! This update is long overdue, as it has been over two weeks since the last time I updated this blog! In that time, I’ve finally finished another one of the requests/suggestions. Check out my posts here and here to see the previous four.

5. “Something related to surfing and ukuleles”

This was a tough challenge, as I really wanted to make a very scenic watercolor painting of a beach and someone carrying a surf board and/or playing the ukulele. But I was stumped and unsatisfied by my attempts at sketching a motif like that, so I went for the digital route. First, I drew a simple, cute character with a ukulele, and a circular background hinting at waves in the ocean. Afterward, I scanned the sketch, finished the lineart and colored it digitally with my Wacom tablet and Photoshop. As a finishing touch, I colored the lineart of the hair, flower and bikini top. The result is far from what I had first pictured, but I figured that I had to get on with it If I want to finish the job I have set out to do. On the bright side, this circular design could very well be used on a button or a round sticker of some sort.

I really do want to finish the requests as soon as possible so that I can focus on new challenges. The week before last, I had to work on a commission for a 5-panel comic strip during most the weekend, so that’s partially why I had to delay work on other things. Sadly, I can’t show the comic strip yet, but I promise that I’ll upload it as soon as it’s been printed.

And by the way, here’s the updated list. Green text means that the challenge is finished. In other words, there’s just one more to go!

American lady tourist pointing at some goats in the open air area of the Norwegian museum “Maihaugen” at Lillehammer, saying: “Look at the kind of sheep they got here!” Submitted by Persijn.

Illustrate an abstract idea, more specifically a question like the kind you would find in language learning books. Examples are “Where do you live?”, “What’s your favorite color?” and “How old are you?”. Submitted by Brian.

“A juice carton going rampage around a city, (a big ass juice carton) and you can see some heads and hands in the air screaming while the killer juice goes “Blubb blubb rawwwr”. Submitted by Mariann.

Last week I asked you readers to suggest something for me to draw. I got four suggestions via the comments, and I’m really thankful for all of the responses to my request! I also got two more from my private Facebook-friends when I linked to my blog post, so that makes a total of six VERY different challenges.

In short, here’s a simplified list of the suggestions:

“Killer coffee!” Literally just these two words…. If you read further, you’ll see in this post how I interpreted it. Submitted by Josh.

American lady tourist pointing at some goats in the open air area of the Norwegian museum “Maihaugen” at Lillehammer, saying: “Look at the kind of sheep they got here!” Submitted by Persijn.

Illustrate an abstract idea, more specifically a question like the kind you would find in language learning books. Examples are “Where do you live?”, “What’s your favorite color?” and “How old are you?”. Submitted by Brian.

“A juice carton going rampage around a city, (a big ass juice carton) and you can see some heads and hands in the air screaming while the killer juice goes “Blubb blubb rawwwr”. Submitted by Mariann.

“Moose in the sunset”. Submitted by Siri & Kurt.

“Something related to surfing and ukulele’s”. Submitted by Ole Bertil.

So, I had not anticipated this many requests. Again, I’m really stoked by the amount of responses, but this also means that I had to abandon my goal of finishing all of them by today. However, I’ve drawn three sketches/illustrations, and they’ve all been processed slightly different in regard to time spent drawing and coloring. Here they are:

1. Killer coffee
I went for really simplified coffee-related things and made them anthropomorphic. And they’re ninjas simply because ninjas are very good at killing… right? I think you can safely assume that this is also inspired by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (hence the weapons). This is based on a really small pencil sketch, inked with Sakura Micron pens, which I then scanned and colored with Photoshop.

2. “Typical” American tourist (click to zoom)There are quite a few stories going around about tourists who’ve said something weird or remarkably ignorant during their stay in Norway. For example “When does the Fjords close?” and “I’ve been ripped off! We went to see the midnight sun, but it’s just the same old sun we’ve all seen before!”.

This is the illustration I spent the most time on of the three I’ve finished today. Both before scanning and doing touch-ups with my Wacom tablet. I actually had to partly redraw the man’s face, because he turned out to resemble how I draw myself (unintentional, of course). I also did some really simple shading with a single grey color.

3. Moose in the sunset (click to zoom)
This was a challenge in a few ways, as I had to illustrate a lot of things that I’ve never had a clue how to draw before. I also worked very small, with the surrounding frame measuring about 16 x 9 cm (6.2 x 3.5 inches). I only colored parts of it because of time limitations.

In an attempt to bring something funny to such a “classic” motif, I added the laptop and hinted to that Mr. Moose M. Bingley just updated his Facebook-status… (not that I think that this hasn’t been done before, because someone must’ve thought of it by now).
To the people whose suggestion I’ve illustrated in this post, what do you think? Leave a comment and tell me what you liked or disliked (or just say “Hi!”, if you want). I hope you enjoyed these, because there’ll be three more coming soon!

I’ve been on a blogging and tweeting hiatus for about a week, so I reckoned it was time to post something new. These are just random sketches that I inked with the Tombow Fudenosuke brush pen in the picture. I honestly didn’t draw much during my ten-day vacation, mostly because I had to do some preparations for a friend’s wedding party. However, I hope to make some “in retrospect” journal comics based on the exhausting, but fun stag party, the task of editing the stag party video and the wedding itself.

Back to the sketches… The brush pen I used was very nice, and I was able to draw both bold lines and tiny details. You might’ve noticed the tiny snail on the guy’s head? Also, I asked my girlfriend what I should draw, and she said “a turtle”. So I drew a funny looking turtle and some swiss cheese. And yeah, I don’t speak french at all, so I hope the turtle’s speech bubble makes sense (and more importantly, doesn’t offend anyone).

I want to try something new, just to see if I can get some responses. If you leave me a comment telling me what to draw, I’ll include your request in the next “Sketchbook Sunday” post. Make it fairly simple, and remember that I really like drawing characters (Tokyo-sized cityscapes and hyper-detailed realism, not so much…). Provided that it is doable, I’ll draw every request that’s submitted before Friday, July 27th. You can also tweet requests directly to me, should you prefer that above leaving a comment.